The true story of a teenager with OCD
'Extremely compelling' - THE GUARDIAN
'Remarkable' - WASHINGTON POST
'A beautifully-rendered memoir' - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Because We Are Bad is a gripping, fast-paced non-fiction memoir that takes you inside the invisible war of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) - where a single intrusive thought can feel like a verdict, and where the mind insists that certainty is the only form of safety.
From the outside, Lily is a bright, capable girl navigating school, friendships, and family life. On the inside, her days are governed by dread: unwanted images, taboo thoughts, sudden spikes of anxiety, and the persistent fear that thinking something "bad" means being bad.
OCD is not neat, quirky, or harmless in this story. It is urgent, intelligent, and exhausting - an illness that hijacks logic, steals time, and makes ordinary moments feel dangerous.
Written with razor-sharp clarity and literary elegance, Because We Are Bad has the pace of a thriller: a page-turning true story of rituals and mental compulsions, of moral panic and secret rules, of the desperate bargains made to keep disaster away.
Lily Bailey captures the looping nature of obsession - the way intrusive thoughts return, mutate, and de
